MY NAME

My name begins with low
though it knows how to sing.
My name is old as the agora
it has an evanescent aura.
Its ephemeral glow is green
as emeralds or lilac leaves.

My name lives in pink nail polish
in the back of my childhood closet.

It ends in satisfied's ah.
It won't answer to "Laurie".
My name always wins at tetherball.

Do not say it with irritation
or it will ignore you.

--

Poetry at a high school -
three English classes
one creative writing
two social studies
and one culinary arts.

We sniffed spices
and sat with artichokes
we took notes, wrote odes
and tomorrow we'll eat
the artichokes steamed
with drawn butter.

We'll read Laurie Colwin's
"Wonderful Lentil Soup"
chapter from the second
Writer in the Kitchen
and eat mulligatawny stew
and write poems.
Brilliant! What luck!

As fate would have it a spate of addle-pated accountants descended
willy-nilly through the skylight and removed the good silver.
And so we begin today a little less brightly than might be.

And so we begin today
Ferndale coffee place
and then to school
where those who haven't gone to state
or haven't found a parent or friend
to carpool with to watch
or aren't staying home
since there'll be a dearth of kids
so how is it worth going?
will I hope say I quote
"I can't even hate this."
As an eighth grader said yesterday.

Happy whatever you do today
may someone not hate it.

Snow day!
Snow day!
Snow day!

I'm off down the hill to buy staples
(cocoa, popcorn, sled)
but here's the postman
neither sleet nor snow etc.

Snow day!
Snow day!
Snow day!

Let's say you're in eighth grade
(sorry)
in English class with the professional writer
or "Professional Writer Thing"
(it's on my name plate for class as PWT -
one feels more important
with letters behind one's name)
and the PWT suggests you write
five minutes - FIVE MINUTES! -
listing what she terms
ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS.
Who's got gum?
Why did I get a referral for folding my paper
into a swan?
I said by essential I didn't mean
"Which is better: cheetos or oreos?"
"Or, it could be essential," I said,
opening the silly flood gates
for the possibility of poetry.
In the high school class two boys
(I had them in class last year)
wrote not essential questions
but a joke referral for their teacher.
When I said I'd never had one,
they wrote a referral for me.
They listed my age as "hella old"
which they meant the one whose
nameplate reads "Dude" told me,
in the nicest possible way.

Some writers and I have been
one of them go into functional schools
with honors class students
who vie vocabularily
and some writers cajole kids
who think they have no time
for words into writing and loving
vital poetry.

Typing student poems
typing student poems
typing student poems
oh lord I forget how to spell
how to use commas
and line breaks
I talked too much
I can tell it turned them off

"I'm the poem I'm looking for,"

"Dear Darkness, Good day sir."

An angry boy has written
an Emily Dickenson-style poem
about Revolution!--

What else should I be doing
but touching these keys
preserving their words?

---

SOMEHOW WE SURVIVE
by Dennis Brutus


Somehow we survive
and tenderness, frustrated, does not wither.

Investigating searchlights rake
our naked unprotected contours;

over our heads the monolithic decalogue
of fascist prohibition glowers
and teeters for a catastrophic fall;

boots club the peeling door.

But somehow we survive
severance, deprivation, loss.

Patrols uncoil along the asphalt dark
hissing their menace to our lives,

most cruel, all our land is scarred with terror,
rendered unlovely and unloveable;
sundered are we and all our passionate surrender

but somehow tenderness survives.

I downloaded 60 pages of "Jubilate Agno" fragments
this was after Googling "Jubilate Agno" and finding recordings
since apparently it has something to do with Christianity,
which figures, given Christopher Smart wrote it
he who was sent to the nuthouse for spontaneously praying
in public, and nudging others to join him. That
would have been uncomfortable, like the orator
outside the University of Washington HUB
in the 70's who railed against I don't know what
though I was impressed by his passion. What
was uncomfortable was that he heckled from his pulpit -
stopping people walking past to ask penetrating
ill-advised questions about their beliefs. A chat
not particularly welcome, though the spectacle
was entertaining if you could stay invisible.

I Googled "Jubilate Agno" and found I could buy
the surviving fragments for $150, so I Googled
Google Scholar and found, from there, the text
I wanted, and downloaded those 60 pages.

Today it's MONOLOGUE with 8th grade fictioneers.
Yesterday in the frigid classroom and I do mean frozen cold
though it was 52 degrees outdoors I exhorted them to play
deeply and they sat in their seats. One boy asked if
a character could - as in "Hurt Locker" - de- rather than e-
volve. So someone was awake and curious, so hurrah.
I said absolutely not. I did not. I gave permission.
I am a permissive creative writing teacher which is why
I need that master teacher in the room -
Oh three are enough lines beginning with I.

Have you read "Jubilate" by Galway Kinnell?
It celebrates Christopher Smart's "Jubilate Agno"
which I didn't know was more than the "To My Cat
Jeoffry" section. Kinnell's poem is in the latest
American Poetry Review, which I subscribed to
after seeing my friend Martha Silano had poems
published by them last issue. Huzzah!

Kinnell celebrates Smart and smartly celebrates
the celebration in '79 when poets gathered
to read 30 line sections of "Jubilate Agno"
to a "large and ardent audience." Huzzah!
Kinnell calls Smart Kit, calls the reading
... a source of joy and truth
the lung-ether of the living loving the long dead.

Sloshy snow walk this morning
rain water under snow cover
every step to the coffee shop
our shoe prints little ponds
for tiny seals and river otters.
Was that a narwhal surfacing
at MLK and Madison?

A mutation of clones
a tribulation of crones
an arbitrage of lawyers
a distress of foragers
an abyss of hopes
an archipelago of hankies
a diminution of questions
an actualization of fears.

Netflix brought us "Howl"
even real Allen at its close
the whole poem I think
and every word said
an actual word said
from the record whether
court or interview
or the poem. We aren't
the beat generation
Allen said, just a bunch
of guys trying to get
published.

Another day another peek
or peak or wallowing swamp
We speak in lisps, rasp
our rage or ragas atop Etna
or stare at sky in Hanoi.
Understand the ante
there is nothing sadder
than a post football Namath
bells, whistles, alarms
that toll for thee Anita
for Larry, Curly, Moe
and more for Lauren
oh she of lovely mien
I mean was not insane
but then more sights than
scissors are torn from hemp
and sitars.
Oh lively ram
what you might tell us
in the talus of your glare.
You were there
a young pessimist
within a gaggle of Megs
amid a wreckage of tacos.

Wackos born every minute
determined actions
dedicated factions
easier to hate than live
forgive, forgive.

2011, so new it's still damp,
the unfolding green of its leaves
still furled so we can imagine
they could take any shape,
even our own.

I've committed to a budget,
and have made a chart,
an excell spreadsheet,
but now I have to enter
money actually spent
and I don't want to.

I claim I don't know how.
I don't understand Excell,
can't even spell it, and
my daughter's dog wants
me to throw the Kong
over the railing so she
can flail after it down
the hardwood stairs.

I don't want to throw
the Kong either. I don't
know what I want.
I want a cape with a P
on it for Poet or Prophet
or Princess or Priest
or poopoo head perhaps.

My clothes are too tight
my head is too foggy
the air is clear and bright
but I'm not.

I'm turning a big age
this year - turning as in going
off or bad, rotten enough
to be thrown into the compost
or off the deck to roll
downhill until I lean against
the railroad tie wall
maybe next to the lost Kong
or last year's pumpkin.

For my birthday
Pharmaca will give me
a lip balm and a chocolate bar
if I give them a penny.

My mother is on morphine.
She forms words like
a dental patient fresh
from the novacaine shot.
Her sentences drift off
into the football game
which she may or may not
be following.
She's dying of cancer
but I thought she
had months.

I have years and years
and here's to that
and to making new
thoughts and plans
and living within our means
and living with meaning.

The first of two days filled with poetry readings.
Poetry Alter Egos Ruled
Boys in Sharpee mustaches
A girl who read in a British accent
One boy with a mandolin as prop (he doesn't play, he told us.)
Another in hat and dark glasses.

I saw one boy in the hallway before class,
asked how he was doing. He told me he'd
been up late choosing poetry alter ego outfits
there were ten to choose from in his backpack
he didn't know which would win out.

And the poems were vividly imagined,
bristling with detail, metaphor and music.
The last reader of the day approached
the poetry chair with high seriousness.
He'd dressed up - shirt, sweater, tie.
He looked at each of us around the circle,
cleared his throat and totally blew
his cover, collapsing in laughter as he
spoke his title: "Spoon."

He returned to focus, though
his audience had begun to chuckle -
a call and response of silliness
through the poem - a ghazal,
a pretty danged real one.

One girl pointed out after that while
we'd been golf clapping, snapping
and jazz hands responding, politely,
to everyone before - he received
a full-handed roar of applause.

I sit in the throne at Memory's Vault
that faces salt water
from where the wind comes whooshing
high above my head
though I sit on this promontory
near the high bunker
and sighting place for wars
though no war ever came here
so the winds are free
to sail above me innocent as stars.
Grey clouds travel north.
The light-boughed evergreens wave to them
as I gesture at this page.
The wind grows insistent.
I know what it wants.

---

A raptor flew in front of me
as I walked the narrow woods path.
It landed in a Douglas fir
across the road
What a big head, I thought.
I longed for sharper vision.
I stood where I was.
It gripped the branch,
swiveled its head to assess me.
It's flight had been low and looping.
It's feathers reminded me of a red-tailed hawk.
The gift of solitude in the thin light, 8 am.
In Laugharne I saw Dylan Thomas's castle
brown as owls, and now I've seen an owl.

All day at school writing

All day today we wrote pantoums:
pantoums about soccer, football, basketball,
about violin playing and cello,
about the beach from the town on the bay,

Pantoums about soccer, football, basketball,
including sports vocabulary
about the beach from the town on the bay,
creature identification and sensory details.

Including sports vocabulary
the rigorous time management for sailing
creature identification and sensory details
and one condemning pantoum and limerick

the rigorous time management for sailing,
violin playing and cello,
and one condemning pantoum and limerick
all day at school we wrote pantoums.
---

I've just read a kitchen implement poem by Ginger Bread,
so I know the idea of poetry nom de plumes and alter egos
has hit at least one home here at the middle school where
the library holds stuffed shelves of poetry books, and
good ones. Naomi Shihab Nye's collections - This Same Sky,
I Get a Little Jumpy Around You, and the Emily Dickinson
volume in the poetry for young people series. Culture
begets Culture. For two weeks, four poets are holding
workshops, one each in fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grades;
the poetry tide is flowing, where kids' poems already
pulse with life on the pod walls. Culture and more culture.
The literacy coach says a local poet comes with a visual
artist, so there's interplay of word and image where
I may have mentioned culture begets culture, and kids
believe in words. And art. And possibility. It isn't fair.

The other poet here at school - I love that - the other poet -
there are four of us in fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grades,
each assigned a level, if not our own level. The poet working with
the elegant fifth graders (they are always elegant people,
fifth graders) had them make up poetry alter ego names -
Citrus Village, Odile Peppermint - I stole the idea today,
and Indigo Despar, O. Snap, Bob Hamburgers, and Pashmina
Windchimes will be saying what their Clark Kent counterparts
might fear to utter, endowed with poetry's super abilities
beyond those of mortal men, leaping the tall edifices of our
own making, traveling faster than speeding alliteration
and thowing down figurative language like miles of new track.
Here's to more new track.

a man in the room intones "dark, darkness, dark, dark, dark."
"See what I'm saying there - it's not incorrect usage, none
of this is incorrect. Darkness of soul. Various degrees of
darkness. There is physical darkness. Capability is more
like," and he gets quiet. "You are capable,... but a capacity
shares an etymology but has a subtle difference, do
you see?" Moments ago he was discussing Plato, how
Socrates and Xenophon (is that right?) are the only reasons
we know what Plato said. He is talking with a student,
reading over his essay, and getting the kid to cop to what
he's miswritten that needs review. "I think we want to say,"
he continues, and I stop listening. The boy is not a we
and the teacher did not write the paper. And now there's
an exploration of the word "ire" which the boy has used
as an adjective. "In the adjectival sense," says the teacher.
The boy asks what ire means. He thought it had to do with --
did I hear this right? -- the pyramids. "There's something
bad about," the teacher says. "There's nothing wrong, but
you can do so much much better." The essay is about Poe,
for whom ire would be a suitable noun, along with oddness.
The boy has claimed "Poe used odd actions to ask questions."
"He's not using actions," the teacher says, "Right?"
The tutor/tutee byplay fascinates me. "Do you ever have
questions outside you?" asks the teacher. "That's a tautology."
And this may require an apology - it certainly would if
I were to parrot this way out loud, which may be one
reason to write. Nobody gets hurt. "Spell for me correctly,"
the tutor says. "In this lady's soul." What if you now
have a plurality of ladies, a pluralities of souls?" This is
a high school boy; the tutor is dressed as though he
may have been transplanted from 1910. This brick walled
basement coffee wine bar has been here that long. Maybe
he appears in low light and can never leave the room. He
never eats or sleeps and if the boy watched carefully
he'd never see a breath received or exhaled, relieved.
"Nevertheless is one word," says the tutor, "all one word
like nonetheless." A pause. "Do you understand?"

A ferryboat ride, a 59 mile drive, and poof!
I'm away from home for two weeks more.
All by myself in a three bedroom cabin
with a baby grand piano in the living room
and all my sheet music left at home.
I've met the teacher, we've planned, and
I've bought an adaptor plug so my three
prong printer cable can couple with the two
prong outlet in the living room with its
fresh funky fifties look - hi fi and wine bar,
a pair of love seats facing one another
and no other to take this in with, just me.
I sit upstairs in the wi fi zone at the grocery
store, having bolted a plastic tray of sushi.
Outside the wind wails and licks the walls.
I have a space heater and extra blanket
in my car. Road warrior, poet for hire.
I hope I'll inspire desire to to wander
paper in a new way. But hey! The day's
almost over and it's time to pack it all
back to the fort, hold court in any of my
three bedrooms, read INFINITE JEST
and rest up to rock them nuts for poems
tomorrow.

Home again, home again, jiggety jiggety
jittery so many too many things to do
and confusing too
so many needs and piles and undone whatnots
so much to put away
so many things I took too many things I cannot throw away
I fear I'll become the woman in the housedress
stuck in the doorway, pushed out of her home
by her own accumulated indecision.
So, nuclear fission has not bearing here
no memorized atomic weights can
measure this sky that wafts benevolent snow
so I know the world has kindness even as I feel bound
by what I do not know or want or have a word for.
I sit and stare and that's what I'm the best at.
I long for my remote tree stump, owl pellet
beside me in tall grass, a shallow lake lapping
cow manure and sulfur aroma no concern of mine.
Though his and her and her and his concerns
concern me even as I fail to discern what to do.
What to do is to do and live with what comes
for the time I have to live with what comes.
"Come," Quinn says, as we wait outside.
We watch bright koi swim the shallow pool
by the nursery cafe. The camel and donkey
greet us happily though a worker says
watch out, the camel snatches hats.
The reindeer lie with backs to us
imagining home in Lappland. They don't
look like they could fly. They may
want to try, they don't seem happy here.

What have I learned about myself here
on the mucky shores of Agency Lake?
What do I take home? What will I use?
A gratitude that I do not live apart
but inside a family. Seattle's fertile
lowland. Dark, damp and fecund.
I am grateful for diligence, patience,
and forgive myself for practicing each
with desultory lack of discipline.
I have some intentions and resolutions
to pack home.

I'm dreamy after a farewell swim
at Ella Redkey Pool where I never
swam in snow. I did swim in 85 degree
water today under sunny skies, maybe
air temperature in the high forties.
Finishing my laps, I floated in gratitude
and then when indoors to shower
under the one replacement showerhead.

I spent a long time reading Mark Doty
this morning. His "Theory of" poems
from FIRE TO FIRE. "Theory of
Incompletion" made me involuuntarily
say, ah.

Self-Portrait in a Borrowed Town

A poem can have dense undergrowth
like west of the pass, or its trees can rise
out of a forest floor with little but
owl pellets for distraction - a stark relief.

Time's instruments are wind chime,
hammer, kiwi and small child.
Baby Quinn holds the ball with two hands,
nine and three, like she held the biggest
tomato growing in the oak barrel.

On the brown couch aslant from the window
an Agency Lake view between the poplars.
I can be murky and miserable as my mother
as ebullient as any grebe. I sit alone
in this borrowed cabin on this borrowed couch.
I don't see the big bald in the big poplar
but I saw three on power poles above
the railroad tracks beside Upper Klamath Lake
on the way to K Falls, and a lone egret
leaning forward in a field.

Clouds settle over the Klamaths, like
a soothing blanket drawn up to your chin,
warming and quieting this worrisome world.
Walking the beach this morning
to small plane drone, the water flat
as melted margarine. When the sun was
done with the hot pink fun of breaking
the horizon the hills dulled lighter than
themselves as though this new day
had already taxed their energy, fading
them.

I watched through binoculars as
a Townsend's Solitaire foraged
for insects on the poplar trunk, picking
them off as the Birds of Oregon said
they do though the size may have been
wrong and my bird was definitely
darker than the drawing. Was it
a Flicker? Absolutely not. I despair
of ever gaining confidence I know
what I am seeing when I am
watching birds. A gang of the same
kind of bird - two, then
three, four, fall like leaves, land,
and move up the tree. They
have to be Flickers.